Shared bandwidth and a 10 computer WLAN

[shaunnutley]

I am thinking of installing a wireless local area network but am confused over the data rates for the 10 computers that will share the bandwidth of the WLAN.
if i have one 54Mbps wireless router connected to a host computer with a 3Mbps broadband internet connection what would be the typical internet speed for each Wi-Fi equipped PC?
I'm not sure if this is calculated by dividing the 54Mbps into 10. But if it is then surely a 300Kbps broandband connection is slow for video/audio streaming?
Can anyone enlighten me?

[ACtheTROLL]

ahhh bandwidth!

basically you always work to the slowest connection.
but 10 machines clouds the issue ... and you haven't mentioned expected useage (pc-pc, pc-in ?) or QOS.

10 PCs talking to the internet
10 PCs talking to each other ....
1 PC talking to the internet .... everyone else on holiday
next door talking to the internet (on the same chanel)... someone microwaving - oh my aching head!

I'd say ... as this is obviously a business setup - even if traffic is relatively light... bite the bullet ... wire the office for Gb working ...

Only use wireless if you can't do it any other way - there are too many pitfalls that possibly you can't afford in a business.

[ll_billym]

To answer your question using basic figures, the 10 PCs will share the outgoing/incoming internet connection (3Mbps). Each PC has access to the full 3Mbps and if only 1 PC is downloading at any point in time then it will download at 3Mbps. If 2 PCs are downloading at the same time they will download at 1.5Mbps each, etc. etc. This will only really become apparent to the user if each is actually downloading a file or streaming data at exactly the same time, in a normal web browsing or email environment (i.e. not real time) the fact that the connection is shared will hardly be noticed, it may slow down a bit at lunchtimes though.

Where I work we have a 2Mbps connection between about 15 PCs and it works fine.

I agree with AC though, wireless networking is not really suitable for a business environment, especially if large amounts of data is being trensferred between PCs.